New home trailed for North East Wales Archives
Plans have been lodged for a 23,000 sq ft joint facility for Flintshire and Denbighshire’s councils, to be delivered next to the Theatr Clwyd in Mold’s civic quarter.
Now submitted for planning permission with Flintshire County Council, the Raikes Lane application has been submitted by KEW Planning, with DB3 Group responsible for the designs.
With Flintshire lined up to play host to the building itself, Denbighshire is leading on the planning process.
The goal is simple: to deliver a purpose-built joint archives facility to house the archive service and collections of both local authorities, with associated access, parking and landscaping.
As set out in DB3’s design & access statement, the North East Wales Archives (NEWA) was formed in 2020 by merging Denbighshire Archives, based in Ruthin, and the Flintshire Record Office, based in Hawarden.
Denbighshire Archives has been based in the former Ruthin Gaol since 1972, whilst the Flintshire Record Office has operated from The Old Rectory in Hawarden since 1956.
Both those sites are listed, converted buildings with severe space and environmental conditioning limitations, which curtails public access and collection management, with storage capacity increasingly constrained.
A new facility will allow NEWA to address those issues, enabling a more sustainable and resilient archive.
As for the site, DB3 said it was selected after an extensive selection process, with options appraisals carried out in 2017 and 2022. Six sites were assessed in full, including Denbighshire Council’s corporate store at Lon Parcw Business Park and Flint Mountain Primary School.
Currently grassland, it lies to the east and adjacent to Theatr Clywd in the civic centre campus – also including the county hall, law courts and former county library – on the northern edge of Mold, around 1.5km from the town centre.
Wynne Construction is attached to the project as contractor, and in January this year brought in DB3 to take on designs initially developed by Lovelock Mitchell Architects. The building’s size has been reduced since the ealy iterations, when a facility of 30,000 sq ft was hoped for.
The neighbouring 1970s-built Theatr Clwyd is a design consideration, being listed, and also having a live project to deliver a sensory garden between it and the proposed archive.
Joint archiving has also been seen in recent years in Cheshire, with Cheshire East and Cheshire West & Chester pooling their resources to advance updated facilities.
Want to know more? The plans can be viewed on Flintshire County Council’s planning portal, reference FUL/000612/26.
